Did the MBS corner the market on trade?

cthia wrote:Make up your mind which side of the fence you're on. Delaying a Diplomatic Courier violates it's diplomatic immunity too, by all of your rules.

No, it does not. Anyway it was a news courier, not a diplomatic courier (see Brigade XO above).

Your prediction about "karma" for Beowulf is still unfulfilled, with no prospect of coming true in the foreseeable future.

cthia wrote:Make up your mind which side of the fence you're on. Delaying a Diplomatic Courier violates it's diplomatic immunity too, by all of your rules.

I know you still don't think Beowulf looked her Karma in the eye. S h r u g.

Depends on how you delay it. Single out that one particular dispatch boat that has diplomatic immunity, and say it won't be assigned a slot through the Junction, that's probably a violation. Like refusing to grant a diplomat's plane a take-off slot from your capital's airport.

But order the junction closed to all traffic, or even all non-military traffic, due to a plausible reason (and an invasion fleet appearing in a damned good reason) and I don't see where there's any violation.


So even if that prepositioned DB had diplomatic immunity (and as a news boat it didn't) you could still delay it by denying shipping use of the Junction.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Make up your mind which side of the fence you're on. Delaying a Diplomatic Courier violates it's diplomatic immunity too, by all of your rules.

I know you still don't think Beowulf looked her Karma in the eye. S h r u g.

Depends on how you delay it. Single out that one particular dispatch boat that has diplomatic immunity, and say it won't be assigned a slot through the Junction, that's probably a violation. Like refusing to grant a diplomat's plane a take-off slot from your capital's airport.

But order the junction closed to all traffic, or even all non-military traffic, due to a plausible reason (and an invasion fleet appearing in a damned good reason) and I don't see where there's any violation.


So even if that prepositioned DB had diplomatic immunity (and as a news boat it didn't) you could still delay it by denying shipping use of the Junction.

I was going to add, unless it was given the Warner Maneuver. Delayed and toyed with like the refit of Warlock. I completely missed Brigade XOs revelation it was a news courier. Which contradicts my astonishment the Mandarins didn't use a diplomatic ship. But perhaps they thought the better than average courtesy afforded a news courier would suffice. And that a diplomatic ship would be too obvious, and or couldn't stooge around after completing it's business. War is such a think, double think proposition.

But, overtly delaying a diplomatic vessel IS a violation of diplomatic immunity, tlb, unless it meets any of the qualifying conditions I stated above.

Jonathan's invasion fleet appearing is one of the three I quote above. War. War is the essence of my entire argument.

The Warner Maneuver.

cthia wrote:But, overtly delaying a diplomatic vessel IS a violation of diplomatic immunity, tlb, unless it meets any of the qualifying conditions I stated above.

Jonathan's invasion fleet appearing is one of the three I quote above. War. War is the essence of my entire argument.

It is also the excuse I was suggesting as to why the DB could be delayed without affecting diplomatic immunity (which was hypothetical, since the actual DB did not have it).

The difference between us in this particular case is that you seemed to suggest it should be seized (even if it had diplomatic immunity); which I felt was an unnecessary overreach.

Brigade XO wrote:Since we already know that the information about the Fillerta plan and the reenforcemtns via Beowulf was leaked to Beowulf which promptly told their long term allied Star Nation and major traiding partner,

Strictly speaking, we don't know that. We assume that the information came to the RMN Intel services from Beowulf security services and/or government, but we don't know for sure. We know Pat Givens believes it comes from the Beowulfans, but she may not know the actual identities. In fact, she vouches for the veracity of the source by saying it had existed for 70 years and had only been used 2 times before to pass information along, both completely true. (MoH, chapter 37)

I've speculated before that it could be the MAlign.

Jonathan_S wrote:But order the junction closed to all traffic, or even all non-military traffic, due to a plausible reason (and an invasion fleet appearing in a damned good reason) and I don't see where there's any violation.

You don't even need that threat. The moment that the Manticore Binary System is in danger, the wormhole could be closed to all traffic and the traffic control could be telling everyone to scatter via hyperspace for their own good. Traffic control also could be preparing to receive reinforcements from any of the other termini of the Junction, so all those warships arriving in close spacing would need room to manoeuvre. Not to mention that OpSec may require that no one be around to see how many ships arrive.

So, quite clearly, attempting to use the Junction during a time of invasion was a stupid plan. The only thing more stupid than that was to try and assault the most heavily defended cubic light-sector in the Galaxy with at best 25 SDs and unable to raise wedges for several seconds. So, in the grand scheme of things, using a courier wasn't THAT stupid...

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:But, overtly delaying a diplomatic vessel IS a violation of diplomatic immunity, tlb, unless it meets any of the qualifying conditions I stated above.

Jonathan's invasion fleet appearing is one of the three I quote above. War. War is the essence of my entire argument.

It is also the excuse I was suggesting as to why the DB could be delayed without affecting diplomatic immunity (which was hypothetical, since the actual DB did not have it).

The difference between us in this particular case is that you seemed to suggest it should be seized (even if it had diplomatic immunity); which I felt was an unnecessary overreach.

Damn straight. Had Tsang gotten thru and Honor died, then what? I know what ...

A bunch of tears crying shoulda woulda coulda.

Now let ask me you a question. This was the battle of the century the galaxy bragged about for years. Nobody knew what toys the real arm of the law would be bringing. Had the RMN found out that Tsang had a very powerful Fleet that would rip a hole in their ass, you still say yield to diplomatic immunity?

Before you answer, please allow me to change into my Rodney Dangerfield persona.

"Alright, I'll say it! Seize my ass! The Manties shoulda blown that phucking SOB right out of the water! His diplomatic immunity was waived when he chose to participate in a war! Flirting with losing a war over a technicality is the worse decision in history second only to the Charge of the Light Brigade!" Rodney out.

cthia wrote:Damn straight. Had Tsang gotten thru and Honor died, then what? I know what ...

A bunch of tears crying shoulda woulda coulda.

Now let ask me you a question. This was the battle of the century the galaxy bragged about for years. Nobody knew what toys the real arm of the law would be bringing. Had the RMN found out that Tsang had a very powerful Fleet that would rip a hole in their ass, you still say yield to diplomatic immunity?

Before you answer, please allow me to change into my Rodney Dangerfield persona.

"Alright, I'll say it! Seize my ass! The Manties shoulda blown that phucking SOB right out of the water! His diplomatic immunity was waived when he chose to participate in a war! Flirting with losing a war over a technicality is the worse decision in history second only to the Charge of the Light Brigade!" Rodney out.

That is a bunch of nonsense and you should know it. What is it about the fates of Byng and Crandall that makes you think that Tsang's fleet could force itself past the Manticoran fleet that had blocked them? Pretend the RMN was not blocking and they had used the wormhole. What makes you think that they would escape the junction's forts? The refusal of Beowulf to allow that movement was on humanitarian grounds, they knew everyone would die in the forts' fire.

Except in the lack of respect, that is nothing like Rodney Dangerfield. Again with the imaginary "diplomatic immunity"?

cthia wrote:Now let ask me you a question. This was the battle of the century the galaxy bragged about for years. Nobody knew what toys the real arm of the law would be bringing. Had the RMN found out that Tsang had a very powerful Fleet that would rip a hole in their ass, you still say yield to diplomatic immunity?

Not even the RMN, with a a fleet consisting exclusively of Invictus, could force the transit. Transiting the wormhole gives you basically two choices: 1) a mass transit of about 25 superdreadnoughts, leaving the wormhole destabilised for 18 hours, or 2) one SD every 2 and a half minutes. Obviously proposition 2 is nonsense: a single SD is not going to win against the combined firepower of the junction forts. How about proposition 1? Well, the Manties know just how much tonne of metal can come through in a mass transit, so it stands to reason the forts are designed to fight that much and win.

I'll grant you that because all the termini were on friendly hands, the forts weren't as mobilised as they had been prior to the liberation of Trevor's Star. Sir Lucien Cortez was quite explicit in details when he explained this to Honor and how the demobilisation of the forts led to increase in manpower available for ships. Plus, High Ridge and Janacek happened. But even with all of that, because the termini were in friendly hands, the forts would have sufficient notice to go to readiness before the first SD in a hostile force even crossed the terminus's hyperlimit.

So even if the RMN had not known Tsang was coming and had not sent Alice Truman forward; even if the BSDF had not tried to block the passage; even if Tsang's force consisted of Invictus, the Junction forts would have easily annihilated Tsang's force. You don't have to trust me, that argument was made in the Solarian Congress by the Beowulf representatives.

"Alright, I'll say it! Seize my ass! The Manties shoulda blown that phucking SOB right out of the water! His diplomatic immunity was waived when he chose to participate in a war! Flirting with losing a war over a technicality is the worse decision in history second only to the Charge of the Light Brigade!" Rodney out.

No one is arguing on losing the war over a technicality. If the needs become that dire, you can bet a force will dig further and deeper into its bag of nasty tricks in order to survive. This could be a problem if the MAlign finds itself losing the struggle, for example. Given how dirty they've already played, can you imagine what nightmares they will unleash if they're losing?

Beowulf made Manticore aware of the information their source passed to them about the attack on the Binary System. The SLN sent an officer to "notify" Beowulf that they would be comming.
When the SLN force showed up and took a position the BSDF with it's commander onboard- notified the SLN Admiral that BSDF would not only resist the ILLEGAL (under the SL constitution) attempt to force transit of the wormhole to Manticore, but that it would attack the SL force and defend the wormhole.
When you read though what is going on just as Fillerta arrives out of hyper, it is clear that the DB that is more-or-less hanging around the Junction is in fact there as part of the Rageing Justice plan is only there to carry the word through the wormhole by Beowulf and link up with the SLN task force and let them know Fillerta has arrived out of hyper. The word of that event gets to the Junction really quickly (as expected) and Astro Control lets that "Newsie" DB jump into th line to let the news break outside of the Binary System.
If the SLN admiral had any doubts that Beowulf and the BSDF was cooperating with RMN, just after she starts to move her forces and is again braced by the Commander of BSDF and told they will open fire if she continues......and moments pass and the RMN task force drops it's screening...the SLN admiral should have had some inkling that even if she were to be successful in engaging bouth BSDF (which was of a signicant size vs her own) that taking on them AND the RMN force (even if was of an equivelent of the BSDF in terms of weapons, the SLN force surviving to force transit of the wormhole is going to be transiting into the most heavealy defended wormhole location in the known universe ....AND THEY ALREADY KNOW THEY ARE COMMING! How could they not? Manticore's force is clearly not only between the SLN force and the wormhole, they are manifestly in cooperation with BSDF. How could you imagine that they would not have sent a MILITARY ship through the wormhole already to notify Astro Control and the Junction Defence Forces that X number of SLN capital ships would try and come though?

You want to fly into WHAT on full alert with it's weapons hot and how many layers of defensive and offensive weapons including mines, forts and hyper-capable warships? You will be comming out of really focused point in space effectivley blind for X amount of time and the entire defensive weaponry of that one exit lane is going to be essentialy a cone of weapons systems (hot and almost bore-sighted) on anything popping into existence out of the wormhole. Really, you think that is going to be a good idea? Given what you think you know about the BSDF SD's and screen plus the RMN force- probably at least as good (remember you really don't belive the stories about Byng and Crandall) as BSDF, how many of you ships are going to be capable of making the transit post gagement to get to the wormhole? And that is just what happens to you while you are still in or even close to the exit lane. Layered defence with rotation on multiple sets of FORTRESSES for EACH lane. Plus more mobile units. Humm.

Time to fish or cut bait, buttercup.....Oh, back off, an SLN admiral with two brain cells to rub together........smartest thing you have done since you got out of diapers.